Socializing Public Transport for Everyday City Use. - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#14942399
A lot of public transport is heavily subsidised. London's public transport is run by a non-profit for example.

OP, I'd rather sit on an air conditioned train than ride a children's toy around Singapore.

SolarCross wrote:Good to know, I eagerly await my bike that costs no money. When will @Reichstraten send it to me? Since it is free I'll take it even if I never use it. I could always sell it to someone who wanted it more after all.

Selling it requires time and energy to be spent online, on the phone and then meeting the buyer. I value my time over all that aggravation.
#14942491
Red_Army wrote:@SolarCross It's almost like we have roads and street lights and sidewalks that no one has to pay a fee to use. Your imagination is so stunted that you think the same couldn't work for public transport because you're completely cucked.


Solar Cross is such a militant "liberal democrat/ green party" sort of person. I bet his arse is cavernous you could probably park a ford transit in there.
#14942492
I expect the completely ridiculous assertion that socialized utilities are unimaginably expensive from Americans since we've been sold that bill eternally and our minds have atrophied from lack of health care, but @SolarCross lives in the UK. Somehow he understands how health care can be a public utility, but balks at public transportation. For my money I'd say that health care is more complicated and expensive than trains and subways.

I think our moronic libertarian ideals are seeping across the pond :eek: Watch yourself @Decky.
#14942500
Red_Army wrote:It's not lying it's saying something that everyone understands who isn't a complete nerd.

It is still a lie even if everyone knows it is not true. Okay so now we cleared up the semantics is it possible that tax funded trains and buses might not be a good idea in all circumstances? Put aside your ideological obsessions for once and think pragmatically.
#14942508
Red_Army wrote:I have never once interacted with you where you didn't mention that communists are worse than nazis so I don't know if you can bitch about me being an ideologue.

What circumstances are you talking about where publicly funded public transportation would be bad?


I am not bitching about you being an ideologue here just asking you nicely to try for once to think outside your box. Your kind of ideologue hears about any kind of scheme to do something resembling central planning and you are automatically for it and spares not a single thought for how it could be in any way undesirable for the people getting planned. There are pros and cons to all things and many things dressed up to look nice are toxic on delivery. I could say vote for me and I'll plan your diet so that you never have to go without cream cakes. What's that? That sounds like central planning, so RedArmy is automatically interested. Well so I get your vote and so now I don't need to please you anymore so now I plan your diet so that you have to eat pee-tainted moldy cream cakes everyday.

So before I tell a few ways this could turn out bad or less well than say fully private buses and trains why don't you exercise your intellect to see if you can do it for yourself. Just one thing for now. Please, I am asking nicely.
Last edited by SolarCross on 27 Aug 2018 02:22, edited 1 time in total.
#14942511
@SolarCross you should at least practice brevity if you don't have anything to say.

I don't know what central planning has to do with free use public transportation and can't think of a circumstance where it would be bad. I assume that the right would say that it is too expensive, but I think the benefits outweigh that cost.
#14942517
Red_Army wrote:you should at least practice brevity if you don't have anything to say.

I don't know what central planning has to do with free use public transportation and can't think of a circumstance where it would be bad. I assume that the right would say that it is too expensive, but I think the benefits outweigh that cost.


I just wanted to see if you had it in you to think for yourself and weigh pros and cons impartially but apparently you can't do that and I wouldn't take that as a point of pride if I were you. All you can do is assume what the "right" would say and then pretend that the reflexive uncritical taking of an opposite opinion to that which you imagine your imaginary opponent would say counts as "thinking".

Since you can't do it I'll give you a few potential contraries:

1. Providers of services are incentivised by those who reward them. In the case of normal transport (it doesn't matter whether we are talking about cars, buses, trains or planes) the incentiviser is directly the user of the service. In the case of a government subsidised transport that incentiviser is directly the government in proportion to the % they reward which for "free" fully tax funded transport would be 100% the government. What this means is that the actual users of the service will be marginalised from influencing the suitability of the service. The only voice that will have influence on the service providers will be those agents who pass on the tax acquired funds, who even if they are unrealistically benign overlords with a perfect understanding of everyone's unique preferences and interests will tend to produce a less than optimal incentive to the providers simply because they are not identical with the users. A simple example of this would be popular routes getting too few buses resulting in crowding and unpopular routes getting too many buses rolling around with no one onboard because the service provider wants show the central planner that he has certain routes that the central planner favours covered in order to get his budget approved and doesn't care at all about satisfying the people on popular routes by laying on more buses because they aren't paying him or saving resources from being wasted on unpopular routes because that doesn't result in loss of income for him.

2.. Well let's do one at time and the above is general enough to cover multiple points if presented differently. Can you even understand this point of view?

Just to show that I can do for your position what you cannot do for mine...

Potential benefits of "free" fully tax funded transport

1. Payment simplification. There is a certain amount of administrative overhead in managing payments for a service provider. Where a service provider takes payment directly from the users and there are potentially thousands or even millions of users each making potentially many uses of the service over the course of a day that will be a very large number of relatively tiny payments that must managed and accounted for. Where a service provider takes his payment from a single payer like a tax dispensing authority then those payments may be very few but large which potentially has a much lower administrative overhead compared with the former situation.

See was that hard for me?

---

Another thought: if all you do is automatically turn left then won't you just go round in circles like a dog chasing his tail? :lol:
#14942519
In South Korea, or at least in the Seoul metro area, the free fares start at age sixty though they are thinking of making it sixty five. It is also noteworthy that even with everyone else paying, the fares have steadily increased, and while they are very, very affordable and the program is largely socialized, lines 5-9 are privately operated...

There are a lot of issues with overcrowded trains not running frequently enough on certain lines.

IDK how good of an idea this is because nothing is actually "free," right.

The easiest way around this is to have frequent users pay for it, while less frequent users almost never pay for it.

The "capitalist" solution of charing a fare makes the most sense.

But I would shy away from a Japan model where every single company involved is private. The Tokyo transit system is garbage, so I hear.

Pants-of-dog wrote:Here is a list of cities that provide free public transport:
https://freepublictransport.info/city/

No doubt @SolarCross will tell us about all the poor innocents slaughtered by communists to bring us these transport systems paid for by taxes.


Some of these are bad examples. Like, Arkansas, for instance. They are counting some University bussing program as free transport though it seems obvious that it is just a benefit for people paying tuition to occasionally catch a free bus downtown.
#14942529
SolarCross wrote:1. Providers of services are incentivised by those who reward them. In the case of normal transport (it doesn't matter whether we are talking about cars, buses, trains or planes) the incentiviser is directly the user of the service. In the case of a government subsidised transport that incentiviser is directly the government in proportion to the % they reward which for "free" fully tax funded transport would be 100% the government. What this means is that the actual users of the service will be marginalised from influencing the suitability of the service. The only voice that will have influence on the service providers will be those agents who pass on the tax acquired funds, who even if they are unrealistically benign overlords with a perfect understanding of everyone's unique preferences and interests will tend to produce a less than optimal incentive to the providers simply because they are not identical with the users. A simple example of this would be popular routes getting too few buses resulting in crowding and unpopular routes getting too many buses rolling around with no one onboard because the service provider wants show the central planner that he has certain routes that the central planner favours covered in order to get his budget approved and doesn't care at all about satisfying the people on popular routes by laying on more buses because they aren't paying him or saving resources from being wasted on unpopular routes because that doesn't result in loss of income for him.


Can you give an example of this actually happening?
#14942547
I can only assume with SolarCross's mentality that he supports privatisation of the NHS and wants the US health system. Because the US have such a Capitalist system, routine health care that shouldn't cost the Earth bankrupts middle class earners. While the poorest can get routine health care without costing then anything in every other Western nation. Which is better? Perhaps we shall see what @SolarCross thinks when he is older I guess. Where do you want your inheritance to go? The Doctor or your children?

Nonetheless the Supreme profits of phamaceutial companies are alarming. So much so that this R+D should be nationalised. In fact, doing so would save the UK government billions in the long run. Billions that could go into free transportation.
#14942551
Verv wrote:The easiest way around this is to have frequent users pay for it, while less frequent users almost never pay for it.

The "capitalist" solution of charing a fare makes the most sense.



Not really when you consider the many positive externalities created by public transportation. It increases economic growth, it frees up space that would otherwise be used for parking lots, decreases congestion, saves taxpayers money on road construction and maintenance, it increases land value, etc. Everyone who benefits from it should pay for it and pretty much everyone does benefit from it in one way or another.

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